The Great Western Red Cedar of Blarney

The estate calls this the most photographed tree in its gardens, which is a serious claim on grounds that also hold a medieval yew and the Blarney Stone. The reason is the shape. The trunk divides low and its limbs run out sideways, each one thicker than most full-grown trees, so the whole plant reads less like a conifer than a wooden octopus caught mid-stride. Children understand it instantly; the low wooden fence around it exists because everyone's first instinct is to climb. In its native Pacific Northwest a Western Red Cedar grows as a straight sixty-metre rainforest column, and the totem poles and canoes of the coastal First Nations were carved from its trunks. Planted here in the early 1900s by the estate's own record, this one chose width over height, and a century of soft Irish rain has clearly agreed with it. The estate has put a small species board at its base, a landowner explicitly inviting visitors to come and stand under it, and you should. The view from inside the canopy, surrounded by rising limbs, is the best in the gardens.